Thursday, July 12, 2007

Metro Manila is teeming with astounding inhabitants close to ten million people, which, if we consider the population ratio, gives us a confidence to outnumber and invade Norway armed with mere slingshots and Regine Velasquez shrieking a nerve-grating remake of a Mariah Carey ditty.

Of the aforementioned populace, it is a widespread truth that the ugly-pretty quotient is very much reasonable: go to one of the gazillion sprawling local malls and you can easily spot scores of attractive people in a fraction of a millisecond. Go to a chic event or a trendy party and watch your shaky self-esteem crumble into a doormat. This is not an exaggeration. You can even go to the shanties and you’d bump into displaced demigods and demigoddesses. I feel good about the fact that as a race in general we can gloat over Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia in terms of gorgeous genetics. Singapore can have the financial hub, Malaysia the oil deposits and emerging tiger economy, and Indonesia, well, erm, the record for biggest archipelago on earth while we lord over in terms of beauty pageants! Ha!I’m kidding.

Hang on. This seemingly aimless ramble leads to the dish of this entry: my pseudofriend Spasmotica.

Spasmotica is attractive, very smart, driven, passionate about things, sophisticated, fashionable, achiever, and chain-smokes like she’s hell-bent to prevail in a frantic census for the title of human Emphysema Central. At her not-quite-midterm age she rose to the top rank and leads the local strategic division of a multinational firm without having to give anyone blowjobs during lunchtime siestas. Although she wants to.

“I’m going to die unmarried!” she moans while tearing her hair, ripping her YSL shirt, and blowing smoke puffs the size of atomic mushroom clouds.

I look up from my brewed coffee and magazine and stare at her, wondering how her parents—a pair of charming, nice, well-adjusted folks—could give birth to a full-blown soap opera.

“And unmourned.” I added, resulting to two hits of a stiletto heel on my shins.

“Whyyyy?! Why is the world unfair? Why am I cursed of being thirty plus and single?!”

As I wince and chuckle she slumps on the table and ponder grimly The Great Cosmic Joke. She’s a philosopher.

Which annoys the hell out of me. Her woes should be my woes. If I happen to have her chromosomes my penis would be terminally callused from overuse. I shouldn’t have troubles proposing marriage to reclusive monks, conscious of the useful detail that my genes alone would do the talking.

But this is Spasmotica we’re talking about. To cheer her up I boredly suggested she dye her hair blonde, have a slavering look of a chihuahua and a dunce, and have a tattoo in her head that spells s-u-b-m-i-s-s-i-v-e.

“Jerk!” was her grateful response. This is my thanks for being helpful.

However the whole melodrama had me thinking: why do people like Spasmotica have such difficulty? Ruling out incest, there are roughly nine million plus potential partners in this raging metropolis and she’s whining over the fact that she’s single and smashing and successful and glaringly impaired in finding a decent date/boyfriend/husband/future widow.

My lame jest on being dunce may have a bit of weight. People are intimidated with intelligence and gorgeousness. Toss in success into the mix and you might as well fence yourself with barbed wires marinated in radioactive carcinogens and ebola cultures.

But why is that?

Why are we inherently stupid for settling on what we can neatly organize in little compartments instead of having a roll and have ourselves challenged with competitive counterparts? Why must we feel superior and have that superiority enforced by picking lesser drones? To feel like we are supreme among maggots? Where is the joy in that?

Isn’t reigning over zombies a sign of deep-seated insecurity? Wouldn’t you want to administrate among slaves or the grand UN council? You can truly feel exceptional among worthy opponents than mediocre herrings. This breed of superiority complex is not entirely bad.

4 comments:

I have a set of female friends with the same problem. i told one of them that if you drive to school on a miata on mondays, a mazda3 on tuesdays, a benz on wednesdays, a camry on thursdays and an exped on fridays, i don't think boys would wanna be your boyfriend because you'd outdo them! it's not an issue of girls having superiority complex but of boys being easily intimidated by beauty, wealth and success. i have a theory on why some good-looking boys have really "interesting-looking" girlfriends. they're intimidated by beautiful girls and are afraid of being busted. so they'd rather go for a less pleasant looking girl (who would definitely want to be their girlfriend) than be dropped by a pretty one.

and to top that, men who are equally successful, good-looking and well-bred are mostly gay. so that cuts girls chances in half.

boyd, you couldn't be more right! haha. the thing is, when we say this people get all incredulous. though i have reason to believe things like these are not isolated cases. could be also a case of attractive people being too picky or have impossible selection criteria that eliminate/dismiss people easily?

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

Citing shameless self-promotion, loudcloud states for the record no discomfort in admitting having no trouble in the self-esteem department. He is possessed of a megalomaniac’s confidence, much to the loathing of many; unleashes an inner fascist when needed to offset being mild-mannered in real life; wields sarcasm, a mordant sense of humor, and jaundiced viewpoint on almost everything mainly to avoid boredom and poke fun on idiocy or absurdity of everything. Inexplicably he ONLY plunks his iPod in his pants right front pocket. Addicted to hysterical outrageous conversations, smart banters, interesting people & an anomalous attachment to color blue. He squanders underpaid earnings into a mounting collection of books, CDs, DVDs, and magazines, resulting to ignored bills, which renders Meralco people irritable. He strongly believes Bill Watterson plagiarized his childhood in Calvin & Hobbes and misleads people into thinking True Love is best essayed in charmingly warped strip, Krazy Kat. He hallucinates most times, a natural consequence of overcaffeination. Essential because he is a chronic insomniac. He blogs to authenticate his deep insecurities.